


Patchwork

by thiefofbluefire



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blackwatch Genji Shimada, Blood and Injury, Human Experimentation, Major Character Injury, Pre-Fall of Overwatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 02:45:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14439798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thiefofbluefire/pseuds/thiefofbluefire
Summary: Genji lost his other arm protecting the commander whom he respected.





	Patchwork

Jack Morrison hated few things in life. He didn't hate when people walking in front of him were going slow. He didn't hate when there was a mountain of paperwork to fill out on his desk because of a shotty op with a few dozen extra bullets fired. He didn't even hate it when Mercy was telling him off for diving in front of a hail of gunfire to protect some diplomat walking in front of him and getting singed on his ears because a few expended casings from his security detail landed on him when the Senate hearing was attacked. None of the bullets had penetrated his vest, but his pretty face was scratched up from hitting the pavement, and Angela was quite insistent on him trying not to land on his head in the future, lest she send him to the public wearing a helmet.

Indeed, Jack wasn't quick to hate something at all.

What he did hate, was when Gabriel was using his subordinates to try and go over Jack's head.

Genji Shimada; former Yakuza prince. Equipped with expert training in stealth and assassination tactics and cybernetic enhancements that put his raw strength and speed output on par with Jack himself. Couple that with his heriditary ability to conjure and weild an actual dragon to destroy whatever he wanted, as well as a major problem with authority, and it's a recipe for several complaints from the Japanese government being filed against overwatch for having someone so powerful in their ranks.

 

With that said, Gabriel usually sent McCree to go through Jack's things.

 

Agent Shimada was standing stiff as a board and white as a ghost with a small stack of papers in his hands as Jack walked in and the door to the office slid closed behind him. His mouth gaped open and he looked about the room like he was about to bolt. Jack scowled at the blackwatch operative, and waited for him to make a move.

"I...," He began. "This is not what it looks like."

"Really? Because it looks like you're going through my files." Jack replied, letting some condescension into his tone.

"I'm not-!"

"How did you even get in here?" Jack interrupted. "I'm the only person with the combination to my office."  
The only person except for Liao, who has the emergency code. But the cyborg didn't need to know that. If he didn't already.

"I... Came in through the window." Shimada answered, laying the stack of papers down on the desk and stepping back with his eyes cast down. He'd been caught.

Jack forwent the question of how he got through the window that he was careful to always lock before exiting his office, and instead beelined for the phone. Liao was going to hear a thing or two about telling people about the window placements in his personal space. But only after Gabriel heard a few things about having something to say and saying it to Jack's face.

The cyborg straightened when Jack made to pick up the phone and begin dialing.

"Matsu koto!" He said as he reached out to stop Jack, frantically grabbing his shoulder.  
Jack swiveled his head to glare at Shimada for touching him, an expression that made the cyborg flinch and draw his hands back timidly, genuine fear in his eyes.

"Onegai," he pleaded. "Do not tell anyone I am here."

That made Jack pause.

"I am sorry for the mess," Shimada continued, eyes flicking to a few other displaced documents before setting on the space below Jack's collar. "The wind.. when I came in, it... I did not think you would..."

The cyborg stepped back a few paces before crouching down and laying his head on his hands.

"P-please.. do not tell anyone." He whimpered from the floor.

Jack did a double take of what was happening; Genji Shimada. Gabe's assassin with an attitude. Angela's patient that seemingly liked to test her patience. Basically the epitome of everything amoral about their medical team.  
He was here in Jack's office, and he was on the floor, on his knees, and he was terrified of the idea that Jack would tell someone where he was.  
Why?

"Who would I tell?" Jack asked, "the only person you should be worried about knowing you were ever here is me."

The statement would normally be enough to get someone back up on their feet. And, true, the cyborg did twitch like there was a bit of life to him, but he didn't move from his spot.  
Jack frowned slightly and gave him a once-over to figure out what he was missing.

His eyes glided over the particularly nasty scar on his left shoulder, and then to his mussed and somewhat shaggy hair. Briefly, Jack thought back to the scars spread over Liao's back, and to a young Li's uncombed mop swaying every which way when he moved. He guessed that might've been one of the reasons why Gabriel told Liao to keep an eye on the cyborg.  
It was with that thought that he realized that Shimada wasn't wearing the gnarly headgear that was part of his combat ensemble. Or his swords for that matter. Was he armed at all? What about the shurikens in his wrist? Surely those were there, Gabriel taught his men better than to ever be caught unarmed, didn't he?

Then Jack noticed that several of the wires that were part of the emergency power reserve on his back were haphazardly displaced. Which seemed like a red flag.  
He'd seen Angela make sure that there wasn't a wire out of place before sending him to Reyes once. Power consumption was a consistent worry of hers that she occasionally confided in him about. Not that he ever had a clear answer.  
With that in mind, there was no reason that Mercy, Klein or Moira would let Shimada walk out of the med bay with his power cell like that.

 

So...

 

"Are you... Hiding?" Jack asked, lowering his voice.

Shimada drew his shoulders in closer and shuddered.

"Why-" Jack cut himself off with a sigh and knelt down. "Hey, look at me when I'm talking to you, agent Shimada."

Slowly, the cyborg lifted himself into a sitting position with his hands balled up on his knees. He worked his jaw, nervously biting at what was left of the inside of his cheeks before meekly lifting his eyes to meet Jack.

"Why here? In my office?" Jack continued, lowering his voice again to something hopefully gentle.

Shimada took a breath and looked over his shoulder before turning back.

"It... Is the very last place that Doctor Klein would look."

Jack blinked. "Why are you hiding from Dr. Klein?"

Shimada looked down at his knees.  
"We... Had a disagreement about... An upgrade that he wants to go through with."

"What sort of upgrade?"

"...to my arm."

"Another one?" Jack breathed. "Angela told me the other day that you were getting fitted with the latest and greatest." He tilted his head. "And Liao said that you were adjusting to the new features smoothly."

"... not this arm." The cyborg muttered, lifting his metal hand up before dropping it back to his knee. He then lifted up his flesh arm, wiggling his fingers. "He wants to upgrade THIS arm."

At first, Jack scrunched his nose in confusion. You can't upgrade flesh. Unless you were juicing, like Jack and Gabriel and Rein. But Angela wouldn't allow that. She was already so against what was done to make the super soldiers, so that couldn't be what agent Shimada meant. Besides, Klein was a cyberneticist, flesh and blood and muscle wasn't his strong suit.

 

Sebastian Klein was a CYBERNETICIST.

 

Jack felt his eyes go wide.

Klein was going to cut Shimada's other arm off. And then he was going to "upgrade" him.

"Angela won't allow it." Jack said, firmly. "She cares too much about what little you have left."

Shimada sighed. He put his wrists together and started moving his fingers in a wave. The metal fingers on his right hand responding slightly faster and more smoothly than the ones one his left. It was subtle, but Jack noticed it, and the cyborg knew that he did.

"One side is faster to move and respond than the other," he explained. "That delay in the...reaction time, could put my life in danger in the field." He dropped his hands. "Dr. Zeigler cares about... This, but I'm sure that if she could make it so I could not be hurt at all, she would."

Jack narrowed his eyes.  
"True, but she wouldn't consent to amputating your last limb in order to make you stop bitching about cuts and bruises."

Shimada jerked his head up and looked Jack in the eyes, bewildered.

"Yes, I said that out loud," he went on. "And I meant it. And you know, I wouldn't consent to it either. Not if it's not something you don't agree with. Which you don't, right?"

The cyborg shook his head.

"Of course not. So why is your faith in Angela shaken? Tell me the truth, Shimada, why are you hiding from Klein about this?"

The cyborg cast his gaze to the door again before explaining, bushy eyebrows drawn together in distress. Jack decided he didn't like it.

"My consent might not matter to Dr. Klein. I know that it matters to Angela-chan, and it matters to Reyes, but Klein has already put out the blueprints for the replacement limb!" The cyborg cut the quiet, slightly aloof facade, finally, and replaced it with an oscillating kind of ranting.  
"We were finishing the daily check for my... My... Whatever! And then he told me that it was time for me to get ready for "full sync"! Then he showed me the designs, I said I did not need them, he told me that it was not my choice, I told him that he was insane, he said he did not care, I threw the blueprints in his face, he got the tweezers and I panicked and I ran!"

The cyborg took a few deep breaths, wiping at his face. Jack noticed a light green mist coming out of the disconnected wires on his back.

"You panicked, and you came up here?"

"He knows all of my other spots," he continued, voice dropping. "Hell. He will find out about me being here too, eventually. There is nowhere I can go where he will not find me, but...." Shimada grasped his left arm protectively, shoulders quaking.

"...I am not ready..."

Jack drew his eyebrows down and sighed through his nose.

"I will not be here for long," Genji continued. "Please, do not tell him."

Jack pursed his lips, thinking. He gave the cyborg another once-over and nodded to himself. He took his personal phone out of his coat pocket and stood up, turning to the private dorm room in the back that only six people knew about.

"Stay here as long as you need," Jack tossed over his shoulder. "I have a meeting with Liao and Torbjorn in a few minutes, so feel free to have a seat."

".... Arigatōgozaimasu, but I am not so foolish as to sit in the commander's chair."

 

\----

 

Genji ended up sitting on the ground with his legs crossed exactly two feet away from Jack's chair for another two hours. Klein was denied knowledge of his werabouts from Athena, curtesy of the commander's orders for her to lead the good doctor on a goose chase through the gardens, around the parking lot, zig zagged through engineering, and through the obstacle course known as, "The Church and the steeple".

Not necessarily in that order.

Any procedures regarding the ninja's left arm in the immediate future were vetoed by Jack, something Genji was surprised to hear about when he walked back to the medical bay. A very, very peeved Dr Klein was using eloquently colorful wording to express his frustrations with the commander to Angela. She wasn't impressed with his wording, but she was surprised that Jack knew about the situation at all, and thanked him personally when she got the chance.

 

 

After the disaster that was Gabe's mission to Venice, a semi-public hearing called the commanding branches of Overwatch to Geneva for statements and explanations for what happened. The numerous requests that turned into demands for them to be unarmed at the hearing gave Liao conniptions, and security for the commanders was never tighter.

 

Jack heard the sound of pins being pulled before the whole microphone booth exploded into thousands of pieces. Maybe two seconds later, he was on the ground with a weight on his midsection, ears ringing. Somewhere nearby, Gabriel was yelling for a medic. Or maybe that was Liao.  
In any case, there was something warm and wet splattered across his face, and when he looked down to see what was on top of him, he got a mouth full of shaggy, black hair.

 

Heavy shrapnel had imbedded itself into agents McCree and Shimada. Both were wearing flack vests, as per Liao's recommendation, but there's only so much that a vest can protect.  
Blood vessels and the bones in McCree's forearm were severed almost instantly, and Jesse would've bled out if Gabriel hadn't ruined his jacket to stop it.  
A larger piece stuck out of Genji's shoulder, a little to close to his neck for comfort, and more dotted the rest of his arm like a porcupine. He went into shock that day, lying face down on the strike commander just to make sure that he was hurt the least.

Genji never commented on it, and he consented completely to the fitting of a new left arm.

 

And Jack couldn't help but feel like that had been planned.


End file.
